An exploration of pizza in and around Rochester, NY, one pizzeria at a time

Thursday, April 9, 2009

Joe's Brooklyn Pizza, Jefferson Rd., Henrietta

Joe's Brooklyn Pizza opened a few months ago in the Tops Plaza on Jefferson Road in Henrietta, just off 390. It's basically a renamed, transplanted version of the Pizza Stop that had been in Midtown Plaza, until Midtown was cleared out to make room for ... well, we're still not sure what they had to make room for, but anyway that's what happened.
Don't quote me on this, but my understanding is that Joe's is run by the brother of the guy who owns the Pizza Stop on State St. downtown, and that they grew up in Brooklyn and then Long Island, where their father ran a pizza shop. So they have some cred as purveyors of NY-style pizza.
The pizza at Joe's is close, but not identical, to that at the Pizza Stop. The crust is about equally thin, foldable but not floppy, but struck me as a bit crunchier than Pizza Stop's. The underside showed plenty of charring - a bit darker, in fact than you can tell from the photo - but seemed to have a more uneven surface than the pizza at Pizza Stop, so the charring, though widespread, was more spotty, giving the underside sort of a mottled effect.
Despite the well-cooked underside, the toppings were not burnt or dried out, meaning that the ovens are kept at a good, high temperature. The sauce, which is homemade, had a noticeable presence, with a more herbal flavor than Pizza Stop's. My palate is not expert enough to identify the particular herb(s), but think of an "Italian seasoning" blend and you'll get the basic idea.
The cheese seemed like basic mozzarella, and was baked just enough to develop some nice brown blisters while retaining a bit of elasticity. The pepperoni slices also had a nice crunchy edge to them.
Joe's has a pretty wide variety of toppings available, including clams, garlic, shallots and prosciutto. In addition to whole pies, there are a number of slices to choose from, including thin "Brooklyn" style and thick "Sicilian" style (is that just a fancy name for sheet pizza?). And there are several "specialty" pizzas on the menu, such as "Aunt Rose's Spinach Pizza" and "Grandpa's Pizza," which is topped with tomato sauce, pepperoni, sausage, peppers, garlic, shallots, olive oil, romano, mozzarella and basil. Wow.
Unless you count calzones, pizza is all they do at Joe's. (June 2010 update: Joe's now serves wings, either plain or Buffalo.) There are a few tables, not many, and according to their website, delivery service will be offered "soon."
If you go, by the way, Joe's is not in the main building where Tops is. It's in a separate building closer to Jefferson Road between Moe's Southwest Grill and something called Five Guys Burgers and Fries.
Oh, one last thing - the RocWiki site contains more than one negative comment about the staff at Joe's being rude. I can only speak for myself, but I didn't see or have any problems along those lines. Maybe things are different at lunchtime when it gets busy, I don't know, but I hope those were isolated incidents because the pizza here is too good to see this place go under due to customer service issues.
Having another option around town for authentic NY-style pizza can only be a good thing, especially in the land of malls and chain restaurants. Every pizza shop should be judged on its own merits, but given the history here it's hard not to mentally compare Joe's with the Pizza Stop. A side-by-side taste test would be fun, but at this point I have to give a slight, shall we say crust-thin edge to Pizza Stop, if only because it's still, to me, the gold standard for New York style pizza in Rochester. So I'll give Joe's an A-.Update, 8/3/09: went back recently for a Sicilian slice with pepperoni and a thin slice with sweet peppers and sausage. Both were very good. The thin slice seemed even more charred than last time, but still not burned, with just surface charring. The thick Sicilian slice was not charred, which makes sense - put a thick pizza dough directly on a surface hot enough to char it, and the underside will burn before the inside is cooked through. Despite its thickness it was still fairly light in texture, not too dense, and not greasy underneath like a lot of "sheet" pizzas. I'm still a thin-crust guy but this was a nice change of pace.
I was mostly just enjoying my pizza and wasn't paying especially close attention to it, but I'll have to go back sometime, as Joe's may need to get bumped up to an "A".Update, 11/12/09: After another visit, I have moved Joe's up to an "A". For the full review, go here.

My hang up with this pie is the sauce. There is something funky about the flavor of their sauce, and it really puts me off. I feel like they're using a sauce with too much seasoning and that throws the balance off.

If they could get that element fixed, in my opinion, they would be worthy of that "A". For now, A- is fair, maybe even B+.

The sauce at Joe's definitely has a stronger flavor of herbs that most pizzerias', including Pizza Stop. To me the sauce worked very well on the Grandma's pizza (see my Nov. 12 post), but not as well on a plain NY style slice. Ideally they'd use different sauces for different styles, but that might not be too practical, I don't know.

Their pizza is awesome :) grandmas pizza and spinach bacon or buffalo chicken .... Well they all taste really good. Joey is papa joes son and papa joes brother is the owner of the shop on states street still named pizza stop. Joey is the owner of joes Brooklyn.

Lol at the sauce tasting funky... I think not you probably had some one make your pie wrong. I only like it when papa Joe makes them he is there in the mornings ;)

Nothing beats the pizza here. I frequently go here for my lunch break and the buffalo chicken is superb. They actually use whole chicken not breaded and the buffalo sauce is perfect. I highly recommend this place to everyone

From my understanding they are rude and instead of customer service they decided to treat my family member like garbage she had a coupon that expired the same day she tried to use it and they refused to honor it and then she told them to keep their pizza and they told hwr to never order from them again I was looking forward to trying their pizza now I will not until they can learn some manners unreal making a sale and getting new costmers wasn't inportant enough to them now who knows how many people 1 person would've given word of mouth to try Joe's Brooklyn Pizza I can say well over 50 people at least sucks to be the employees that prob won't have a job for long if they keep up that practice of ignorance

Ratings Guide

A: great; one of the best this area has to offerB: pretty good; not top-notch, but definitely good, and better than averageC: OK; nothing special, but it’ll do; typical for our areaD: edible; if you’ve already paid for it, you might as well eat itF: downright bad; toss it and get something else